The Underbelly of Paradise
by Pardra
Summary: There are some places no one wants to visit, those dark, unused places that become the origin of ghost stories and urban legends. Even paradise has these places. True or not, not even the radiant facade of Master X can keep away the insistent stories that something lurks beneath Neo Arcadia Tower. Too bad even Neo Arcadia's sinister underbelly needs maintenance from time to time.


**AN, please read:** I took a big risk writing something so big with OCs, but I decided I couldn't do a story like this with canon characters. I couldn't do that to them. Yet. _I sincerely hope that people will read this and give me feedback despite the content and despite the OCs_. This is not going to be the norm for me and is simply a getting back in the saddle piece. I admit, I was starting to feel pretty lonely writing and posting fanfics, and getting no response no matter where I posted them, hence my long hiatus.

This story was inspired by, and is a prequel to RandyPandy's Devil's Revelry since both stories are based on our Megaman Zero AU.

 **Warnings** : My first attempt at horror, OCs, AUs, and Reploid cannibalism.

* * *

Bolt had been a maintenance unit in the Tower for as long as he could remember, which is to say, since he was activated. He had never had the luxury of family or childhood. Someone had switched him on and he had known immediately who he was—serial number TMU-22-and where he was—the Tower, and what his job was. He was a big unit, built for heavy lifting and, as some coworkers would say, designed to drive people insane. He was grey all over, hair and eyes, but his face was youthful. Over the weeks following his activation, as he proved himself competent among his peers and overseers, he earned a name, respect, and friendship. With age and competence came high priority jobs, potentially dangerous ones—to him or to the people living in Neo Arcadia Tower.

That was exactly what today had lined up for him. He and Spanner—a maintenance unit several years his senior—were being sent to the Underbelly. That ominous name was somewhat of a joke among the Tower staff: the Underbelly referred to two restricted levels belowground. It was also the subject of most modern ghost stories, especially if you lived in the Tower. Newbies were terrified with tales of screaming and vanishing Reploids. First jobs usually included patrol through the room with the hatch leading into the first level, or doing a fitness check on the machinery in it, depending on your profession.

Neither level were used by any living creature, but did house some important, but sturdy Tower organs. Great pipes that shunted water throughout the city, rustproof and nearly impenetrable, the Tower's energy was created there, storage of emergency supplies in case worst came to worst. The level below that was completely restricted, no one was allowed down there, or allowed to know what was down there, for any reason, and maintenance was done by mechaniloids... as was the norm with the upper level.

For all intents and purposes, the Underbelly was completely automated and untouched.

That is until one of the units in charge of monitoring energy usage in the Tower discovered a bleed down there, where precious energy was being wasted in the dark, unlived in depths. Without cameras, without a blueprint, and with security jammers mucking up every attempt to zero in on the issue, it was impossible to tell where it was exactly, other than _down there_. Mechaniloids had been dispatched immediately but had been unable to repair the energy leak, nor had they returned. No one was exactly surprised; mechniloids used for repair weren't particularly intelligent in any sense, and given the amount of jammers in the Underbelly it wasn't surprising that they had wandered off aimlessly until their reserves went dry. But that meant it was time for plan B, Reploids.

That was why he was currently climbing down a ladder barely wide enough for someone his size, down into the stale, still air of the Tower's underbelly. _"Get in, find the leak, fix it, get out,"_ their overseer had relayed Master X's orders. He had requested permission to send Reploids down into the depths, but their leader hadn't seemed too pleased with the idea.

Spanner, his companion for this journey, was already on the ground, the light from his helmet twitching restlessly back and forth as the Reploid took in his surroundings. Bolt forwent the last five rungs and dropped to the floor beside Spanner, causing him to jump. It was an explosion of noise as his boots met the naked metal floor, bouncing off the high ceiling. The sound seemed to catch on the bare walls, thrown helplessly into the darkness that even his Reploid eyes couldn't penetrate. It sounded like the halls didn't get any smaller. Why was everything so big and empty?

Spanner turned to give him a _look,_ his bright green eyes acidic in the dim light from the tiny hatch above them. Bolt smirked anxiously, core still pounding from the noise. "What?"

Spanner was unimpressed with his attempts to scare him, dark skin flushed with coolant. Bolt _had_ spooked him, he realized with glee. "We're the first people down here in what might be decades and the first thing you do is stomp around like a little kid?"

"Why are you so _excited_? It's restricted, but that doesn't mean it's exciting down here," Bolt said, spreading his arms wide as he spun in a circle to take in the…. Nothing. Three corridors, all identical. High ceilings, extremely low orange light strips, naked metal and dust. "You were all scared about it last night. It's not fit for living down here, and there's no reason to be down h—hey!"

Spanner had started walking off into the forward corridor without him. "I'm interested in the _structure_ ," Spanner said, turning his head slightly as the younger unit trotted to catch up with him. Every footstep from the bulkier unit sounded like cannon fire in the stillness. "This is the oldest part of the Tower, and it hasn't been touched since it was made. No paint, no furniture, nothing to hide it. I want to see if the architecture is different down here than it is up there."

Bolt glanced back over his shoulder and was dismayed to find he could no longer see the light from the hatch, or the ladder. At least the light strips were working. Despite it all, he couldn't help but roll his eyes at Spanner's usual obsession as the older unit marked out an arrow on the wall in glowing green chalk so they could find their way out. It wasn't like they could teleport with all the jammers. For once Bolt understood the human sensation of claustrophobia despite the wide walls and ceilings.

"Come on, Span, you're a maintenance Reploid, not an architect, and ain't nothing gonna change that." Sadly, they, as government workers, didn't have a choice in their careers. "Besides, it looks exactly the same down here as it does up there."

That was sure to invite an argument. Sure enough, the older unit made a disgusted noise. "You're hopeless. This is clearly early Arcadian architecture. Look at the rounded striplights and the walls! The arcades!" His headlight shot upward, illuminating a series of plain, but elegant support arches.

Bolt wasn't impressed, but he tried to be. He thought about the arches, his light angled upward. They were a prominent feature of the design of the city's older buildings. "…Those things are called arcades? Is that why the city's called Neo Arcadia? That makes so much s—"

"No, no, hopeless, what did I say? You're not that much younger than me, you should know better!" Spanner exclaimed in disgust. "Arcadia was a city in ancient Greece, and the name roughly translates to paradise."

"The underbelly of paradise?" Bolt said wryly, unable to resist ribbing him a little more. "Shouldn't we just call this place hell and be done with it?"

As usual, his coworker was a fountain of unusual and unnecessary information. He should have been a librarian, or an architect as he wanted to be. Not that they had a choice in what they were. Anyone who put in a request like that to Master X was swiftly moved to another part of the Tower, or the surrounding living area, permanently. Bolt wasn't sure if that was Master X's doing, or the Judges for bothering the Master with such a trivial request. He begrudgingly understood it. There was no real need for an architect, or a librarian who could think and speak beyond certain preprogrammed parameters. Maintenance units like them who could do their jobs quickly and efficiently and without fuss? They were important.

"Oh. You're smart, Spanner," was all he settled for. He could have looked that up in a heartbeat had he not been down here, where they couldn't even directly communicate with their overseer, but the sentiment stood.

The green-eyed unit didn't answer him, but he could see the way Spanner's shoulders picked up, the light from Bolt's helmet shining off dull green armor. But now they had work to do and no idea where to start doing it.

He looked around for any sort of outlet or side-corridor and nearly tripped over his own feet. The loud _scff-thunk_ made Spanner jump and turn, marking straight through the arrow he'd been drawing. Bolt grinned at him. "Jumpy, aren't you? You scared, old man?"

"Clumsy," growled the smaller Reploid, aggressively capping the chalk pen. "Stop fooling around. Get in, get out, that's what we were told."

"You _are_ scared, aren't you? You were excited just a few minutes ago!" Bolt's expression became sly, his voice lowering. "You thinkin' about all the stories now?"

"Bolt, stop being an idiot," Spanner rolled his green eyes. "It's dark enough that neither one of us can see well and we're based on humans. It's natural to be nervous in the dark, not because of some stupid stories made to haze the newbuilts."

"I thought the humans were the ones that made them up? You know, all superstitious like they are." He had nothing against humans, really, but in the end they were silly animals that spooked easy. Some stories said that the Underbelly was where Master X's dark secrets were kept: experiments, an underground prison, that it was some unending labyrinth for Mavericks to roam in for the rest of eternity.

"No, because I know for a fact that the overseer before this one told me about the screaming he heard down here, and the repair units he lost—"

That gave him pause. "Wait, what? I haven't heard that one?"

The smaller unit squinted at him in disbelief, his darker skin making it seem like his eyes were floating there, gleaming acid green. "Gee, last night when you were trying to tell me every rumor and story about this place led me to believe you'd heard them all. Especially when you said 'I've heard them all, Spanner, I can do this all night'."

Ok, now that just made him sound like an ass. He had been joking! They were Reploids, not humans, and Reploids didn't believe in ghosts or monsters. Only other Reploids. "….Think it could have been a Maverick?"

Spanner glanced over his shoulder, his light striking the end of the corridor where it verged—finally—off to the right. "It very well could have been, Bolt, which is why _you're here ,_ now stop being a little newbuilt like you told me I was last night."

Bolt pouted at him, which probably looked ridiculous given he was over 6 and a half feet and nearly three hundred pounds. He was a lifting unit, muscle, which was why he was here with the slim, nimble-fingered Spanner. "I… thought I was here to, you know, lift things?"

Spanner rolled his eyes again. "No. The overseer told be you're here for protection."

Bolt fidgeted nervously. "From what? Does that mean they're true, then?"

"Asimov, Bolt, you either believe the stories or you don't!" He hissed. He had been trying to be quiet, but his sibilant exclamation echoed menacing in the dark hallways. Bolt let out a pathetic meep, and, to his surprise, Spanner laughed. "Look, Bolt, what gets lost down here? Mechaniloids. Why? They lose connection with base after a while, can't hear their handlers, and eventually go feral. That's what all the noises, the supposed hissing and screaming it. It's just mechaniloids. And after all these decades they're probably all dead from drainage."

"Or they're sucking out the power down here," Bolt said slowly, nodding. His hackles slowly smoothed over—what was a hackle anyway? Mechaniloids. It suddenly made sense, why hadn't he thought of that before? "You're smart, Spanner."

This time the older Reploid seemed to sense that he was making fun of him and began striding away, forcing Bolt to hurry after him or be left in the dark. "At least we can put all that stupidity behind us and fix this…. Idiot."

Ouch. They squabbled a lot because Spanner was fun to ruffle, but had he actually upset him this time? "I promise I won't let any mechaniloid spiders scurry away with you~"

He saw the Reploid shudder from neck to hips. "Don't you dare even _think_ about that."

He had never recovered after being beset by a repair arachnoid, all those years ago, that had gone Maverick and latched onto his face. It had been Bolt who had finally tackled their fearless leader to the ground and crushed the bot's head, leaving its legs to curl and then fall off Spanner's head. He screamed the entire time; Bolt had felt bad for him, really, he probably would have been just as bad had it happened to him.

"Sorry, Span. But really, I won't." He was the one with the tools that could actually be classified as weaponry. Blowtorch, high-powered nailgun, an arm drill…

They continued walking in silence, though Spanner dropped back until he was only a single pace abreast of his companion. The minutes passed into hours of slow marking and examining, scrutinizing glowstrips for excessive brightness, eyeing every access panel with suspicion.

The hallways grew shorter and narrower as they passed out of the main storage area, resembling something more domestic in design. There were doors at regular intervals, their access panels dark and their windows black. Unused. Bolt couldn't resist going over and trying to play around with the access panel. Of course, it was dead, and shining his headlamp into the small window showed nothing, not even the inside of a room.

"I thought this place wasn't fit for living in?" He turned to Spanner for an answer, frowning.

"Would you live down here with no light and no power?" He scoffed, back to his usual offhanded arrogance rather than annoyance. Bolt would soon fix that. "Emergencies, remember. In the case of disaster, the higher ups in the Tower have to go somewhere."

"Here," Bolt finished, then frowned. "But what about us?"

Spanner dusted off one of the access panels himself, examining the make of it. It seemed old, even though Bolt didn't pay much attention to that sort of thing. The older man glanced at the rows of doors, spaced widely enough to be comfortable living, but not enough to fit everyone in the Tower. "We would die, I guess. We're not important."

Bolt left the door, no longer as curious to look inside. His stomach felt like it was going to twist itself into sick knots. He hadn't been designed with a full digestive system like some Reploids, just a plain receptacle for liquid energy, but whenever he got angry he felt it there, in his belly, like molten metal. "Of course not."

Realistically, he knew that. The older, powerful and the influential had earned their right to be spared in case of Apocalypse 4.0, but that didn't mean the thought of being left behind didn't make him shiver in anger and fear. His skin prickled with it.

This time he was the one to start walking again. They were wasting too much time down here, letting precious energy go to waste in these dark, lifeless corridors. There wasn't even any sign of mechaniloids, he noted. Or had he just not been paying attention? "Come on, Span, in and out real quicklike. I don't want to miss my shows."

Spanner was easily pried away from the living quarters and the two continued their trek. "They're reruns," he said suddenly, in that awkward, confused tone of someone who had said something without thinking it through, to fill the silence. "You've seen them all."

"I don't want to miss my reruns, then," Bolt amended easily, feeling a little less weird now that they had left the black, staring windows of the doors behind.

Now he began to notice it: long silver scratches on the floors and walls, some from singular, pointed legs, some from claws, all dulled with age. Spanner eyed the marks as well, but there was no further evidence that there might still be an active mechaniloid down here, so they continued on without fretting over it, until they reached a realization. The corridor here wasn't as dark as the ones before it. It was getting lighter? Or maybe their optics were finally adjusting to the dim light—no, it was definitely getting lighter the further they went along this corridor. There were no signs or marks—other than the scratches—to tell them where they were headed, but how could this not be the source of the leak? It was supposed to be nearly pitch black down here, light like that wasn't nece….ssary.

They had reached the end of the hall, coming out into a large, circular room. There were two exits, a corridor straight ahead, and a closed door, its width telling him there was a staircase behind it. That… had to be the entrance to the lowest level, the one no one but Master X was allowed to be in. But that was nothing more than a fleeting thought for Bolt, his attention was on the room itself. _The UV strips were on in this room_ , and….

"Flowers?" Spanner whispered beside him. Bolt nodded dumbly; the room was full of technorganic flowers, their sturdy stems and petals gleaming with circuits, filling the room with a dim prismatic glow. Vines had begun to creep their way up the walls, straining for the warm glow of the overhead strips that had been designed to keep humans healthy. "How?"

His coworker hadn't the faintest clue as to how, or why, there were cybernetic flowers growing several miles below the surface of Neo Arcadia, and he also didn't know why _the UV strips were on_. "Well, we found our leak," he muttered. But now they had to find the control panel to turn the lights off. "We'll have to report this when we get back."

Getting technorganic flowers to grow was a difficult but necessary first step to learning to get natural flowers to grow again. If there was something down here that was making them grow, some mineral or substance, it would have to be excavated and taken to Master X for review.

Bolt took a hesitant step out onto the grassy carpet, nearly losing his balance—again—as he felt the unevenness beneath his boots. Vines and grass and flowers. It was an odd sensation, and an odder sight to see something this lush in Neo Arcadia. This place was beautiful, like something out of a fantasy movie; Bolt was inexplicably uncomfortable, probably because he had never seen so many flowers in one room. He was half convinced they'd stumbled into a gas leak of some kind, enough to kill a human, but just enough to make a Reploid start seeing pink elephants.

To his right, Spanner started circling the room the other way. It would be difficult to find the panel under all these vines, but it had to be done. He reached out to feel his way along the wall as he slowly worked his way around along the wall. After a few minutes, something crunched under his foot, sending a dull stab of pain up through the leather sole of his boot. Startled, he looked down and—

His yelp drew Spanner's attention, and his hiss for him to shut up. "What is it?!"

"I…" Bolt looked more closely at the bits of twisted metal he'd crushed, and felt himself relax. "Mechaniloid bits. It looks like something bigger than it got a hold of it. Poor little bastard."

Satisfied, he lifted his head and went back to looking, but a gleam stopped him. The shards beneath him weren't the only ones. Now that he had noticed the first bits of debris, he saw more, scattered about carelessly as if the predatory mechaniloid had been play with its prey, shaking it about like a squeaky toy. "I… think we know where the mechaniloids stayed," Bolt said in a tight voice.

There was too much debris for one bot, too many colors. Spanner had noticed it as well, nodding grimly. "Why here though?"

"….Maybe there's something here they wanted? Maybe they were trying to get down the stairs?" He gestured to the forbidden door, its metal panels gleaming starkly in the light from the room. There were scratch marks on it, he realized. He was close enough to see that now. "….They definitely wanted in this door. What do you think is down there?"

"Not our business," Spanner snapped. "We've already been down here half a day; we can't afford to waste time thinking about things we'll never know."

Bolt had a point. Despite how unsettled he felt, he went back to looking—quickly—for the access panel for the room's lights. He tried to ignore the coolant stains on the walls. What was down there that made them go crazy? He tried to focus on his work and, for several minutes, he did. Until Spanner found a Reploid optic.

"So Reploids really did die down here," Bolt said with a nervous chuckle once Spanner had called him over to look at it. He tried not to look too hard at the obvious teeth marks where something had gnashed away at the sensitive organ until deciding it wasn't worth the effort. "I guess the stories weren't all hazing material."

"Let's get out of here, this all needs to be reported." Spanner tossed the refuse aside suddenly, but it missed the leafy blanket and pinged loudly off the metal wall, flying off somewhere into the _graveyard_. That was what it was, wasn't it? How many mechniloids and Reploids shells were they standing on, covered up by flowers and vines? Flowers….

He turned to Spanner, even as he continued feeling along the wall for the panel. "Do you think…. Do you think we're what makes the flowers grow?" He shut his mouth so fast that his teeth clicked together, but Span still heard him. He could tell by how tense his shoulders were.

They shouldn't have found that disturbing. Why would it be when it was a well known fact organic flowers thrived off decayed material. Why shouldn't cybernetic flowers thrive off the nanites and coolant Reploids left behind? Was he afraid that, with this knowledge, Neo Arcadia's somewhat questionable government might start….

"Span… do you think this is all here on purpose?" He whispered, as if afraid to raise his voice.

"What do you mean?" Came Spanner's reply, out of sight over his shoulder. "Mechaniloids and Reploids wound up fighting each other down here, they died, the end."

"I mean, if we make the flowers grow, do you think…. They put it all here on purpose?" Was this what happened to maintenance units who needed to be retired? They were the oldest of the ranks, were they—

"Bolt. You're an idiot."

The younger unit felt himself relax, both from Spanner's exasperation and from the feeling of seams under his fingertips. He ripped away several vines. "Found i—ah!"

His shriek drew Spanner over with Reploid quick reflexes, thought, for a second Bolt was amused. Spanner was half his size, he was supposed to be protecting _Spanner_. But his attention was quickly drawn back to the thing that had made him cry out. The dead Reploid. The mostly whole dead Reploid slumped against the wall, not ten feet from the access panel.

"Must… must have been the last one," Bolt said once he regained his voice. "The last one alive."

Spanner fearlessly crouched down to look at the corpse. Its optics were open, he realized, the dead grey discs making him glad he hadn't eaten any E this morning. It must have been pretty once, he realized. Its hair was full of dust and matted with a substance Spanner wasn't sure he wanted to identify. It looked red. Underneath stains and old, dried up wounds where naked metal shone through, the skin was pale, nearly white. The fingers were ripped raw, hands stained up to the forearms in gore. Did it have no weapons then? It had the androgynous, glamorous build of a unit built for an aesthetic-centric job. Design, secretary, dance. So why was it down here? Why was a defenseless, slim unit down here where only mechaniloids and repair units went?

There were round holes in its forearms, where its once pristine grey bodysuit had torn away. Had something bitten it? No, they were perfectly spaced. It must have been dead for a long time. Much longer than the lights had been on, so why were the UV strips on? Spanner stood up and looked around.

"Open the panel and lets get out of here. If they want to salvage the body they can come down here with a team, we weren't given any instructions in case of an encounter like this." Bolt nodded numbly and slid the panel open. Spanner kept talking; it was soothing to hear him. "It was a Wood type. The flowers are growing thickest around it. The Wood chip must have leaked somehow and influenced the wiring to do… other things."

"Like turn on the sun for the plants?" He said, relaxing further. He almost felt like kicking himself for thinking up such stupid reasons for the presence of the plants, and the strips. He switched the UV lights off. The flowers continued to glow softly.

"Maybe," Spanner said, already making his way back to the corridor they'd come from. Miraculously, Bolt didn't trip in his haste to follow him out in spite of the foliage.

It had taken them—internal chronometer said 6 hours, that was not half a day, Spanner—to get in and fix the issue. Now that they weren't looking around aimlessly they would be able to get out within at least two—

 _Sccchh-click_.

Both maintenance units stopped at the same time, glancing at each other. If Bolt had had body hair, it would have stood on end. "Pipes?" Bolt whispered, hoping perhaps Spanner would recognize an obscure pipe noise Bolt did not. Spanner shook his head nearly imperceptibly in the darkness. "Bolt, did we check the door…?"

The door? Why would they check it, it had been sealed—

 _Shh-click. Thump._

Oh. The door. The door to the sealed off level. The door the mechaniloids had been trying to get into. They needed to turn around. Bolt knew they needed to go back and check, just to be safe. But he didn't want to check the door. "Come on, let's just—"

 _Tap_.

That single, delicate noise echoed thunderously in the darkness. The sound of something stepping into the corridor with them. Bolt whirled around, his skin felt cold and his core fluttered madly in his chest.

Behind them was the room full of beautiful, softly glowing flowers, ethereal and benevolent as it had appeared when they first saw it. They both noticed the hole in the illumination, the silhouette of something standing slumped in the entrance of the tunnel. Something grey and dusty, folded over itself. Bolt stared, core in his chest, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and then it moved again, shuddering, slowly, what must have been the upper body lifted. He caught sight of a single amber eye blazing in the shadow, an eye filled with glee. Monster. Something his processor couldn't quite register.

"Run," he whispered, and then it screamed, a horrible, high-pitched shriek that prompted him to turn and flee, grabbing Spanner around the waist and hauling him along with him at his side like a child's doll.

The thing followed. He could hear its steps on the floor, the thud of flesh and the scrape of exposed metal, two beats, steady and rapid behind him. He darted down a corridor suddenly, to their left. Spanner shrieked as something flew past them, until the sound of nails catching on the wall drowned him out with the noise of tortured metal. This time there were four beats. Four steps, the sound of something wet and choking. Spanner was still screaming until Bolt's arm tightened around his waist and crushed all the air from his lungs. He wanted Spanner to be quiet, so it couldn't hear them. But of course it could hear them, it could hear their footsteps echoing loudly, it was right behind them, making a horrible gurgling sound as if it was drowning. Spanner screamed again. He must have looked; Bolt didn't want to look, he had seen enough and he didn't know what he had seen.

They must have opened the door somehow—had the lights been keeping the door shut somehow? He didn't know, he didn't care, he only cared about getting out of here and back to the surface. Under his arm, Spanner seemed to finally have regain some sense and had activated his blowtorch, a small but formidable precision tool where his right hand had once been. The steps behind him stopped, and for a moment he gleefully thought it had been frightened off by the weapon. Then something hit his back, something wet and cold and squirming slapped against the back of his neck, and more wetness, this one warm, spreading over his left arm. Bolt let out a cry of shock as the attack caused him to stumble and nearly fall over. He couldn't afford to be clumsy now, or he'd get them both killed, and by Light he recovered as gracefully a woodland deer bounding through the trees. He heard a thud as the thing bounced off him, and then nothing. Bolt wasted no time in running, fleeing as if he had been named for a famous athlete rather than a fastening pin. His core lifted as he took a moment to observe his surroundings, lulled for the moment by the silence behind him. This looked like the same corridor as before—he could see Spanner's mark, yes, this was it!

"Span—" he looked down to tell the older Reploid they were getting close.

He found himself staring at Spanner's neck instead of wide, frightened green eyes, staring at the stump his friend's head would have set on. This time it was Bolt screaming, he dropped Spanner without a second thought, the steps in the darkness came again. Tap-thump, tap-thump, two beats, two limbs. Spanner's body slid backwards into the corridor they—he, because he had been alone in that wild flight—had come from.

 _Shhf. …Crunch._ And then came the most horrible noises Bolt had ever heard. He backed away, headlamp lighting up Spanner's shoulders, glinting off the golden optics, one bright, the other dim, as they appeared over his body, staring at Bolt for a moment. He wanted to cry. For the first time since he'd been two, Bolt wanted to cry. He was going to die, like Spanner had. And then the optics slid away, leaning down toward Spanner's… neck. Bolt hoped he never had to hear the sound of synthflesh being peeled away from muscle ever again.

Acid bubbled up in his throat and spilled over his lips, but he found his legs again. And Bolt ran, leaving behind the thing, the godawful noises, and Spanner. What was left of him, he thought hysterically. It was supposed to have been him, he thought, guilt and relief warring for dominance in his jittering body. He was supposed to be the one to protect Spanner, in case there were mechaniloids. Why didn't he turn and fight it? He had weapons, and it didn't look that big! If he had just confronted it head on when it had first revealed itself—but that didn't matter anymore, there was no one left to protect, so he ran.

He ran and ran, his breathing hard and heavy as he tried to cool vital organs that protested this sort of treatment. He wasn't built for running, the muscles in his limbs burning as if they would melt through his synthskin. Bolt ignored the warnings in his HUD and kept running. His face felt cold, his back felt wet even through his suit. And so did his left arm. He knew what was on his arm. Spanner. Spanner who was dead, but Bolt would live because of him. How ironic.

At last, he slowed, his energy reserves finally throwing up a shutdown warning. That was what happened when you did things you were made to do, and did them excessively. It was why Spanner handled the delicate repairs, because he hadn't been made for lifting or moving or drilling. Poor Spanner, he should have been an architect.

Bolt stood panting at an intersection, trying to catch his breath, trying to stay ahead. He was fairly sure it would be satisfied with Spanner though, why wouldn't it leave him alone? Why? _Why why why wouldn't it when it clearly didn't like leaving anything alive down here with it?_ He needed to get out, immediately, to get out, report, and then never set foot down here again. He would tell the newbies if they were ever offered the chance to come down here, to see things no one had seen in decades, to see outdated technology and design, that it wasn't worth it. Bolt knew, with certainly, that he was lost—no, there! The light from one of Spanner's marks! He could see the green glow of it just around the corner! Bolt limped over to it, his hopes rising as he approached it. He had to be close now—but no, the arrow was pointing the wrong way! He was going deeper, he had to turn around—

A gurgling coo reached his ears. He turned slowly to see a pair of amber optics floating in the darkness. And behind them, over its shoulder in the distance, he could see the outline of the ladder in the center of the cavernous storeroom like Jacob's stairway. He shook as he stared at the thing, it was nearly in the reach of his headlight, but still it stayed there, staring at him. It wouldn't move, and when it did, Bolt probably wasn't going to like it. But he knew he had to get through it. His arm melded into his blowtorch extension. A low, stuttering growl filled the air as the menacing rumble of the torch began. Lighting up the corridor with orange.

Bolt stared in horror. The Reploid, it was the Reploid from the flower room. The same delicate, scarred face, stained with gore, fresh coolant. It had been the last one left alive because it had been the one to kill them all. A Maverick? The eyes were the wrong color, bright gold with a hint of orange, but not blood red—what was that?

His torchlight had illuminated something, something waving in the darkness behind and above the small monstrosity. It was slim and long, waving slowly from side to side, glinting ruby when it caught the light at the right angle, then subsiding back into serpentine silhouettes. There was more than one, he realized, shocked and confused as he noticed three more of these waving tendrils. Where had they come from? What were they? They didn't seem to be threatening him, or the Reploid, and the color, the way the light reflected off them was almost fluid, but it retained a flexible, cylindrical shape. He was still thinking when he realized the creature was inching closer. And then it clicked, it clicked and his gut turned to ice. It was trying to distract him.

"Limited," he whispered, and the eyes slid sideways as the monster tilted its head like a confused puppy. He remembered the holes in its arms. There must be more in its back, where it had punched through the flesh of this dead Reploid—that was where the gel was coming from. "Not a Reploid at all."

Of course, why wouldn't it be a Limited? Those rare creatures that had once terrorized Reploids shortly after their creation before being exterminated. Creatures of gel and metal that ate Reploids and crawled up in their frames, hollowing it out for themselves, luring in more Reploids. Eating them. The predators at the top of the food chain. They had supposedly been extinct…. But then Master X had declared Limiteds had citizenship, equal rights, that they were good and intelligent as any human or Reploid. There were rumors, even, that his spouse had been a Limited, hijacking a Reploid shell. And rumors that the Limited had murdered the Reploid and tricked Master X. Bolt vaguely remembered a tiny redhead in some of the official archives of early Neo Arcadia. What had happened to Master X's spouse?

The Limited lunged for him, and flashing orange teeth and a wriggling tendril of crimson gel came inches from his face before reflexes kicked in and he drove his arm up into its gut, halting it. The arm with the torch; the Limited keened piteously, and Bolt flinched as the Reploid's vocal processor kicked in with a very human scream of pain. Something wet and cold wrapped around his arm, grasping it at the elbow, and there was a crunch and a clatter as the limb fell away. A moment later there was icy pain shooting up into his shoulder, the obscene sound of his own blood falling onto the floor in a shower of hot coolant and lubricant, he felt light-headed.

This couldn't be happening, not when he was so close. Something wrapped around his right legs. Gel, he knew it was gel. He didn't remember falling, but he remembered the Limited crawling up on his chest, sitting on his chest with its hips turned to one side. He could smell burnt flesh and hear its whimpers of pain, groaning with every breath. Its eyes were burning, molten gold in the darkness above his head. The lamp on his helmet illuminated a pretty face, delicate, stained and torn, framed by that memorable red hair. And then its fingers rested delicately over his eyelids, wet and cold with Spanner's blood, and dug down sharply.

Bolt had found Master X's missing spouse.

* * *

'Master X' was not pleased when the overseer of the repair staff came to tell him that, though the leak had been fixed for a time, it had returned within a few hours. And the maintenance units had not. There was no getting around it then, if they were all so incompetent. He would have to go down there himself.

After all, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.


End file.
